The Mystery of Vote Share & Seats Won in Indian Elections

By: Sutanu Guru

The first-past-the-post system of declaring winners in elections in India presents an intriguing scenario in which the vote share of a party rarely corresponds to the seats it wins. We conduct a deep dive in three states- Haryana, Punjab and Maharashtra to understand the seat share and vote share dynamics in the recently concluded 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Every pundit worth her salt is furiously trying to make sense of electoral data that has resulted in an unexpected setback for the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The most confounding question asked by ordinary folks who are not well versed with data is: how does a 0.8% fall in national vote share result in a decline of as many as 63 seats for the BJP? Besides, how does a less than 2% rise in vote share result in a near doubling of the seat tally of the Congress? Frankly, many “experts” too are stuck for sensible answers to such simple but important questions.

Common sense always comes to rescue when such data related questions are asked. The first is: elections in India are based on the first past the post system. Simply put, you don’t need to win more than 50% of votes to win. Just getting the most votes is enough. Punjab offers a classic example how this works much to the surprise of even seasoned analysts. The Congress gets a vote share of 26.3% (down 13% from 2019) and yet wins 7 seats-one less than in 2019. The AAP gets a vote share of 26.02% and wins just 3 seats. The BJP increases its vote share by 9% to 18.56% and yet failed to win a single seat. The second thing that is difficult to explain is the ability of alliance partners to transfer their votes to each other. Something similar has happened across India this time.

Maharashtra offers another example of how this difficult to explain and analyse phenomenon played out in the 2024 elections. The accompanying chart shows the vote shares obtained by the six major players in the 2024 elections in Maharashtra. The BJP has an alliance with the Eknath Shinde led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar led NCP. The Congress, the Uddhav Thackeray led Shiv Sena and the Sharad Pawar led NCP form the rival alliance. Now look at the intriguing numbers that confound so many people. In Punjab, the Congress vote share declined by 13% to about 26% and yet it won 7 out of 13 seats it contested. In Maharashtra, the BJP vote share declined by about 1% and yet it managed a miserable 9 out of the 28 seats it contested. In contrast, the Congress obtained a vote share of about 17% and won 13 out of the 17 seats it contested, emerging as the largest party in the state. Even more surprising for many is the fact that the Sharad Pawar led NCP obtained a vote share of about 10% and won 8 of the 10 seats it contested. There is more. The INDI Alliance vote share was 0.15% more than that of the NDA. Yet, the INDI Alliance won 30 seats while the NDA tally crashed to 17 from 41 seats (a different alliance) in 2019.

What does this say. In individual constituencies, it is the party with the most votes (first past the post) that wins, no matter how low the vote share. Second, the success of an alliance depends on the ability of partners to transfer votes to each other. It has worked wonderfully well for the INDI Alliance in Maharashtra and failed to work for the NDA.

Haryana is another example of this mystery. In the 2019, the BJP vote share was 30% more than that of the Congress. It naturally swept all the 10 seats. 2024 elections, the Congress vote share jumped from 28.5% to 43.7%. The BJP vote share tumbled from 58% to 46.1%. If you add the vote share of alliance partner AAP, the INDI Alliance vote share at 47.61% is higher than that of the BJP. Yet, the BJP managed to avoid the Maharashtra debacle by winning five seats. Go back to first past the post system to understand why.

Wait for some more data driven analysis of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.